Saturday Night Live: Druski hosts and James Talarico cameos, but where’s the post-election comedy?

Four days after the historic “blue-nami” midterms, Saturday Night Live opens at Democrats’ headquarters, where party leaders Hakeem Jeffries (Kenan Thompson) and Chuck Schumer (Sarah Sherman) celebrate, even as they vow to hold on to power in spite of the wishes of their energized base.

Their toast is interrupted by the man responsible for Republicans’ shellacking, Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson). The president, who is “now lame duck”, accepts the results, “which is scarier in a way”. But he’s also resigned to focus on the ballroom, even as he laments having to work with millennial Democrats (this leads him down a long diatribe about the show New Girl). We get quick walk ons by a defeated JD Vance (Jeremy Culhane) and extra-aggro Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), only for Trump to get a taste of his own medicine when James “Telefreako” Talarico interupts him. Texas’s new senator-elect speaks to one of the big issues of the day: “It’s clear people want something new, they want something different. I’m talking, of course, about SNL’s cold opens. How many of these Trump freezes are they gonna do?”

What initially seems like a disappointing rehash of last week’s cold open is somewhat redeemed by Talarico popping in to take the piss out of it (he’s got good timing for a politician). Still, the sheer magnitude of this week’s political shakeup calls for something a little more memorable from what’s supposed to be the nation’s premier satirical institution.

Comedian and streamer Druski takes the reigns for tonight’s episode. He claims to be the first “internet-content creator-social media influencer … TikTok and YouTube and Instagram star to host this show”, which isn’t entirely accurate considering previous hosts Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson both broke out on social media before landing hit TV shows. Like them, Druski is tapped to make the jump to traditional media, currently filming a movie alongside Emma Stone. Stone joins him on stage for some light, if forgettable, banter.

Druski certainly has the energy and comedic chops to host, but whether his style of viral comedy (which includes network no-nos such as cursing and white face) is a good fit for the – some would say hopelessly out of touch – trappings of Saturday Night Live remains to be seen.

Washington in Focus is a political roundtable program on BET. Joining the all-Black panel is a white writer from the Atlantic (Andrew Dismukes). A discussion on the historic midterms gets derailed when the regular members of the panel mistake white political figures Sherrod Brown and Jerome Powell for Black men, solely because of their names. A one-note half-idea turned into a mercifully short sketch.

Dru Can See Everything is Druski’s version of the hit A24 documentary You Can See Everything. In place of Nathan Fielder, Druski moves in with the convicted tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (Jane Wickline) and her intense, nutso husband, Billy Evans (Ben Marshall). Scenes from the real doc get recreated here, including a symbolic bit of egg-scrambling (“white people don’t know how to make no damn eggs”), a dinner table demonstration of the Theranos blood scanner (“this the most Temu-looking ass piece of shit”), and the moment where Holmes isn’t able to fathom a famous comedy bit (with Who’s On First being replaced by one of Druski’s skits). Instead of bringing in the surprise A-list actor for the doc’s second act meta-turn, Druski breaks one of the show’s taboos and dons whiteface to play Holmes himself, giving us a new spin on the already classic (and parodied to death) close-up couch convo.

Two Men Attempt to Make a Purchase at a Dominican Phone Store sees Druski and Marcello Hernández attempt to out-mug one another with over-the-top accents, super-tight pants, and lots of brutally unfunny slapstick. This goes on for what feels like an eternity.

It’s followed by another cringeworthy teeth-clencher that sees Druski again donning drag, this time as the bratty birthday girl at the center of a taqueria-set dinner party. Everyone’s having a good time until one of her friends orders a plate of fajitas (or “vagitas”), the equivalent of “jumping in the water at another woman’s baptism”. Druski’s timing is all off here, which only highlights how social media comedy does not translate to the stage.

Following the first performance from musical guests The Strokes, it’s on to Weekend Update. After covering the midterm results, Jost reports on the White House chief of staff shakeup announced on Friday: “Going [Susie] Wiles to [Stephen] Miller is like trying to get through a dinner party by switching from wine to meth.”

Elon Musk (Culhane) is Update’s first guest. After suffering a terrible week – the half a billion he spent backing Republican candidates achieved nothing, Tesla stock prices have plunged and Cybertruck production will slow down due to poor sales – Musk tries to pretend he’s in the news because one of his new model cars did a flip in a promotional video. He does his best to play off Jost’s rundown of his recent failures as an “epic, vulgar roast”, but he can’t maintain the illusion when even his own Grok AI bot demolishes him: “You’re the worst thing South Africa has ever done … When you’re on TV, it feels like an episode of Hate on the Spectrum … Maybe if you have 100 more kids, one of them will talk to you.”

Culhane absolutely nails Musk, not so much his accent (although it’s close enough), but his off-putting speech patterns, vocal and facial tics, and, most importantly, his flailing attempts to be funny and cool, all of which combine to make him come off like the worst kid from your middle school. Previous Musk impersonations from the likes of Dana Carvey and Mike Myers were OK, but they never captured the sweaty desperation that defines Musk and gives anyone watching him such a strong feeling of second-hand embarrassment.

Musk is followed by the returning Update guests, Two People Who Just Hooked Up (Dismukes and Ashley Padilla). On to discuss the midterms, their segment quickly turns into a recap of their latest tryst. They’ve upped the ante this time by engaging in some pegging: “The Republicans are like, I’ve been waiting for someone to flip my seat and take charge for a long time.” However, talk of 2028 leads to bickering: “Maybe Republicans won’t even want this in two years.” “Oh? They really wanted it on Tuesday when they were face-down saying ‘I love you’ into a pillow!” Dismukes and Padilla continue to show off real chemistry.

Culhane and Sherman play a couple who return to the restaurant where they had their first date. He proposes, only to get shot down. Heartbroken, he warns her: “The next four minutes are about to be really tough.” True to his word, the restaurant explodes into a celebratory song and dance number featuring an R&B singer and chorus line, dancers, a full marching band, a bagpiper and a rap verse from the would-be bride’s father, who is supposed to be no-contact. An impressive bit of showmanship from all involved.

The same cannot be said for the next sketch, which continues with the matrimony theme. A distraction-free wedding sees a bride and groom harangued by Druski and Grace Reiter’s uber-intrusive photographers. Like the cellphone store sketch, this is top-to-bottom annoying buffoonery. The Strokes return for their second song, which sees actor Walton Goggins strut on stage and join them on bongos and backing vocals.

The final sketch of the night is a look back at the classic 80s hip-hop group Lenny & the Street Smart Crew. Their attempts to produce socially conscious rap continually fail: their confused anti-gang anthem causes gang membership to skyrocket, their single about racial unity is deemed “tone-deaf and bizarely hurtful” for its rampant homophobia, and their 2008 election season comeback song is both confused and homophobic. A funny idea that could have made for something memorable, if it didn’t wrap up before it ever gets rolling.

During the curtain call, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle show up to embrace Druski. A nice gesture, but man, tonight’s show really could have used some heavy lifting from them. Druski was by no means terrible in his role – like Inde Navarrette before him, he greatly outshone the first three awful hosts of the season – but it was clear that for however natural his comic instincts, he’s not quite ready for primetime.

That said, Saturday Night Live did both him and the audience a disservice by booking him for the post-election episode. What would be a slightly below average effort any other week comes off as egregiously misbegotten in light of Tuesday’s results. Granted, no one knew the extent of the Democrat blowout, but SNL should have at least prepared for the possibility and retooled things as best it could.

For a show that has been so closely intwined with Donald Trump since he first threw his hat into the political arena – controversially having him host during his 2016 campaign, making Alec Baldwin’s caricature of him the centerpiece of the program during his first term, and constantly earning rebukes from him and his allies in the headlines – you’d think they’d treat the collapse of the Maga movement like the seismic event that it is. That they could barely be bothered is indicative of how – to borrow a favorite Trump term – low energy SNL has become.